March 31, 2015

23 defendants, including 9 doctors, are named in a 199-count indictment that alleges they participated in a massive scheme in which they lured people recruited from low-income neighborhoods, homeless shelters and welfare offices to corrupt medical clinics for unnecessary tests with the promise of free footwear such as sneakers, shoes and boots.

Here's the complete list of all the Jewish community leaders who wrote to New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman asking for leniency for William E. Rapfogel, the Modern Orthodox former head of the the New York City Jewish community's anti-poverty charity, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. Rapfogel and his buddies stole at least $9 million from the Met Council, taking the money right out of the mouths of the poor and using it to line their own pockets and the pockets of their friends. But these leaders – including at least 19 rabbis – wanted Rapfogel to get a sweetheart deal.

Something as easy as adding more spinach, kale, collards and mustard greens to your diet could help slow cognitive decline, according to new research. The study also examined the nutrients responsible for the effect, linking vitamin K consumption to slower cognitive decline for the first time. “Losing one’s memory or cognitive abilities is one of the biggest fears for people as they get older,” said Martha Clare Morris, Sc.D., assistant provost for community research at Rush University Medical Center and leader of the research team. “Since declining cognitive ability is central to Alzheimer’s disease and dementias, increasing consumption of green leafy vegetables could offer a very simple, affordable and non-invasive way of potentially protecting your brain from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.”

“Since we heard that there were many cases of fraud and intimidation at the polls, and the Yachad Party as a result did not pass the threshold [of votes necessary to hold any Knesset seats], I hereby give notice that according to my Torah opinion anyone who has seen or heard of these things [the fraud and intimidation] must give testimony to the proper [legal] authorities [i.e., the police and the state prosecutor's office]…[in order] to bring truth, justice and integrity into their proper place – and as it says in the Torah, ‘if he does not tell [then] he will carry the sin.’”

March 30, 2015

The audio is an official recording of the radio transmissions between Flatbush Hatzolah EMT/ambulance service and its EMTs and ambulances. Based on eyewitness accounts and other information, it appears to begin about 10 minutes after the FDNY arrived at the Sassoon home to fight the fire, which was already out of control, at about 12:23 am on Saturday, March 21.

Former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger stepped down from his position after being arrested 15 months ago. He allegedly exploited his office to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal payments, fraudulent charitable donations and bribes.

Five babies of African asylum seekers died in ad hoc daycare centers in South Tel Aviv over the past eight weeks, and dozens more reportedly died in similar unsafe, overcrowded and unsanitary ad hoc centers under similar circumstances over the past two years – all while the government of Israel failed to do anything to protect those children or help.

A 6-year-old haredi boy remains hospitalized today after drinking bleach yesterday which was brought into the child’s home on Ben-Zakai Street in Bnei Brak in an empty soda bottle and was meant to used to clean the home for Passover.

Cigarettes cause cancer, heart attacks and other health problems and are forbidden by an increasing number of rabbis (mostly Modern Orthodox). But lots of haredim smoke anyway and now a group of Israelis is taking advantage of that sad fact by selling "loosies" and packs of "kosher for Passover" Israeli cigarettes, complete with several kosher seals of approval from haredi rabbis, to haredim in Brooklyn.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been convicted of bribery and public corruption.The Jerusalem District Court this morning found that Olmert took envelopes filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from American Jewish businessman Morris "Moshe" Talansky.

Modern Orthodox developer Shalom Lamm's hasidic candidate Aaron Tzvi Rabiner won the Board of Trustees election in tiny 420-person Bloomingburg, New York by 9 votes – but only after the county's board of elections changed its own ruling without informing the non-hasidic incumbent and allowed questionable voters, all of whom were hasidim, to have their votes counted. If the board had followed its own original ruling, the non-hasidic incumbent would have won in a landslide. "Under these circumstances," the incumbent's attorney wrote in a letter to a local judge, "appellate authority dictates that petitioner’s remedy as to this election now rests with the attorney general…” [emphasis added]